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Post by chandlerklebs on Aug 13, 2015 6:12:04 GMT -5
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Post by chandlerklebs on Aug 13, 2015 6:12:51 GMT -5
This weekend one of the topics I would like to cover is the gap between science and religion.
My view is that science is the domain of what can be observed and proven by experiment. Same cause same effect is the way I view science. So in a sense science is merely a subset of determinism.
Religion tends to be about unfalsifiable claims which cannot be proven or are logically incoherent. This would include such ideas as free will, acausality, or anything in the distant past which we cannot observe or test in any way.
I'm sure everyone will have an opinion on the compatibility or incompatibility of certain scientific or religious theories.
Also, my mom has been writing down some stuff that she may talk about if she joins us for podcasts. She has a lot of experience being fat shamed in her life and may join us in our conversation about the obesity topic. Also, my mom is some sort of Christian who does not believe in hell. I hope that she can talk with the group about it and clarify her explanation of why eternal hellfire is actually not biblical.
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Post by chandlerklebs on Nov 21, 2015 17:41:10 GMT -5
What does it mean to exist?
I have an idea that we could talk about in future podcast. What does it really mean to exist? When we say that free will does not exist, it's not the same as other claims. There are things which have an actual coherent meaning that might exist such as unicorns, angels, gods, etc. A bigger question to explore is whether our dreams "exist". Do thoughts, feelings, etc. exist?
Depending on what you perceive qualifies as existing, you can make the case for why a certain form of free will, morality, god, paranormal experience, etc does exist and does not exist AT THE SAME TIME. It's time we get down to the meaning of words and the meaning of existence. Does the concept of existence even exist?
George emailed me and told me he isn't available this weekend. He has a cold and needs to rest. I plan to be on Skype at our usual times on Saturday at 6 central and Sunday at 1 central. Whoever is available at the time can of course suggest a topic to record episodes on or we can go with the exploration of existence. This could get super deep and complicated.
Also, we could explore some of the logical fallacies that Mitch recently mentioned in an email. Some of them are seriously free will related such as the Just-world hypothesis.
"https://t.co/ve9e93TW8f
Some of us- *cough* *cough* - commit more of these errors, and commit them more often, than others:
Ambiguity effect – the tendency to avoid options for which missing information makes the probability seem “unknown.”
Attentional Bias – the tendency of emotionally dominant stimuli in one’s environment to preferentially draw and hold attention and to neglect relevant data when making judgments of a correlation or association.
Clustering illusion – the tendency to see patterns where actually none exist. Also referred to as “patternicity” by author Michael Shermer.
Conjunction fallacy – the tendency to assume that specific conditions are more probable than general ones.
Confirmation bias – the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.
Experimenter’s or Expectation bias – the tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations.
Ad hominem – attacking the arguer instead of the argument.
Poisoning the well – a type of ad hominem where adverse information about a target is presented with the intention of discrediting everything that the target person says
Abusive fallacy – a subtype of “ad hominem” when it turns into name-calling rather than arguing about the originally proposed argument.
Argumentum ad populum (appeal to belief, appeal to the majority, appeal to the people) – where a proposition is claimed to be true or good solely because many people believe it to be so
Association fallacy (guilt by association) – arguing that because two things share a property they are the same
Appeal to authority – where an assertion is deemed true because of the position or authority of the person asserting it.
Appeal to accomplishment – where an assertion is deemed true or false based on the accomplishments of the proposer.
Appeal to consequences (argumentum ad consequentiam) – the conclusion is supported by a premise that asserts positive or negative consequences from some course of action in an attempt to distract from the initial discussion
Appeal to emotion – where an argument is made due to the manipulation of emotions, rather than the use of valid reasoning
Others:
Illusion of control – the tendency to overestimate one’s degree of influence over other external events.
Illusory correlation – inaccurately perceiving a relationship between two unrelated events.
Just-world hypothesis – the tendency for people to want to believe that the world is fundamentally just, causing them to rationalize an otherwise inexplicable injustice as deserved by the victim(s)."
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Post by chandlerklebs on Nov 28, 2015 9:42:40 GMT -5
Free Will, Existence, and Obesity I've been thinking much about existence lately and what it means to exist or not. The trouble is that if we say the mind exists, then the things contained in the mind(dreams, thoughts, beliefs) exist. The thoughts and beliefs we have are powerful enough to cause us to act in certain ways. A fine example of this is the fear of hell and how powerfully it scares people away from questioning religion. We have much work ahead of us in reforming our language. In a recent podcast I spoke with Mitch about the existence problem. The free will question is not a question of existence. It's a logical problem of trying to make people responsible doing for what they could not have done otherwise. When we talk about free will, choice, personal responsibility, etc. We are talking about things which are believed or felt psychologically but which cannot be observed with our 5 senses nor can experiments be performed to test them. This brings me to an important topic. We need to revisit the whole issue of obesity and fat shaming. I recently watched the first pary of a documentary called "WHO made me FAT". The comments revealed huge belief in choice and personal responsibility. Here is one of the dumbest comments: "I saw the title for this video. I did not watch the video. I know the answer. YOU. You made you fat. No willpower, no self control. You're fat and it's a problem. I have four words for you: Eat less. Move more." Because people believe in free choice, they are going to blame the obese people for choosing to eat unhealthily. Another comment summed this up: "hmm, who made a fat person fat? Probably that person, unless someone is forcing them to eat fatty foods at gunpoint." So apparently the only way you were caused to eat a certain food is if someone held a gun to your head. People are forgetting about the "Invisible Gun to the Head" that Nick Vale and I were talking about in one of our older episodes. The reason for this is simple, unless something is visible, people don't think it exists! That's why people say that something has no cause just because they don't see a cause. Seriously this is a challenge and worth serious conversation. I recently started a playlist which I will be adding videos related to obesity and why it's not not people's fault that they are fat. If we can find the magic spark to connect the obesity issue with the free will issue, then just maybe people will get it. I'm still not exactly sure how but we need to revisit it and get back to something which is quite visible: obesity. www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjuS4p5DhF2AHWB3RwSC5U6Fr8fWZAEen-- The Free Will, Science and Religion Podcast is Live on iTunes and Stitcher. itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/free-will-science-religion/id1001850850?mt=2www.stitcher.com/s?fid=68854&refid=stprThe usual times we get on Skype are Saturday 6PM Central and Sunday 1PM Central. Also, any two or more co-hosts are welcome to record episodes at any time during the week. If they do so, it is a good idea to email me at chandlerklebs@gmail.com so that I can keep things organized when I upload them. Facebook page: www.facebook.com/freewillscienceandreligionOfficial site: freewillscienceandreligion.wordpress.com/Internet Archive: archive.org/details/freewillsciencereligionpodcastYouTube playlist: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjuS4p5DhF2AU1CRFkP-Ou1yoJ0ZC88swDirect RSS feed: feeds.feedburner.com/InternetArchive-CollectionFreewillsciencereligionpodcastForum: freewillscienceandre.freeforums.net/ |
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Post by chandlerklebs on Dec 3, 2015 16:24:54 GMT -5
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Post by Mitch_J on Dec 8, 2015 4:43:41 GMT -5
Chandler, the comments by Joseph Hirsch in that link have reminded me that I eagerly want to discuss "responsibility." As I've said countless times before, "free will is only meaningful in the context of responsibility." I know Trick's written about this in the past ( here and here), but I think many scientists, when arguing that quantum phenomena and/or indeterminism may give room for free will, are making an embarrassing error by losing sight of "responsibility." The theoretical physicist, by discussing hypothetical quantum phenomena and bizarre acausal events, completely erodes responsibility, but believes he has argued for free will. In actuality, he's destroyed it completely! |
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Post by trick on Dec 8, 2015 12:13:01 GMT -5
So there is this free will believer who I'm commenting back and forth with. He thinks that causality and acausality is a false dichotomy. His comment is: "Would you mind giving an explanation of how "causality and acausality" make free will impossible? As far as I see, the standard argument only works if you believe a) deterministic causality and b) acausality are a true dichotomy, ie one or the other must be true. How can you logically demonstrate that deterministic causality and acausality are the only two valid ways that the past can influence the future?" A big part of my book was explaining how this in fact IS a necessary dichotomy. If an event is caused- it isn't acausal, and if it's acausal - it isn't caused. There is no third option. I explain how probabilism isn't ontic (it doesn't actually exist) but rather epistemic (about what we don't know / don't have access to know). I explain how a cause cannot have multiple (really) possible effects as that leads to variables that are inherently self-contradictory - so an acausal event would be required for real alternative possibilities. And I explain how both ways in which events can "happen" are incompatible with free will...and even how a combination of the two cannot help. |
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Post by chandlerklebs on Dec 8, 2015 15:36:48 GMT -5
If only we could get people to actually read the books we've already published instead of having to repeat it all the time. Trick's book was really great.
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Post by chandlerklebs on Dec 9, 2015 6:00:44 GMT -5
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Post by chandlerklebs on Dec 21, 2015 6:25:29 GMT -5
Hey guys, I thought you might be interested to know that I found a video creation tool to use for putting the podcasts up on YouTube. Here it is. VideoPad by NCH Software www.nchsoftware.com/videopad/For the first 128 episodes, I had been using Windows Movie Maker. It worked but it didn't have the ability to export to avi or mov files. It also was a little bit complicated when trying to set resolution or framerate. I used VideoPad to save episode 129 as an avi file and it was much smaller than the mp4 files I would get from Movie Maker. I think I'll keep using this for awhile. |
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Post by Mitch_J on Jan 24, 2016 10:16:14 GMT -5
A pressing topic on my mind: - "Fear and the Future", or "Fear of the Future". - Many fear that we will unwittingly form a dystopia while attempting to create an idyllic utopia. (Recall The Matrix, which posed the idea that the human mind "rejected" the original, perfect Matrix). - " Transhumanism (abbreviated as H+ or h+) is an international and intellectual movement that aims to transform the human condition by developing and creating widely available sophisticated technologies to greatly enhance human intellectual physical, and psychological capacities." - Wikipedia - I want to break down some of the major taboos preventing human advancement, by addressing some of the naive criticism from the opposition. For example, Religion
- How can we have morals without religion?
Free Will
- How can we have a successful criminal justice system without free will? How can
we solve problems, if we never hold anyone accountable for anything? Where's the
moral responsibility?
Pain & Suffering
- How can we have a sophisticated sense of touch without feeling pain?
- Won't we lose our humanity if we can no longer feel pain?
Science
- Isn't there a point where we should stop using science to improve ourselves?
GMOs, augmented humans, nanotechnology, cloning...doesn't science lead to
the erosion/destruction of humanity?
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